What should horrify Americans is not Kaepernick’s choice to remain seated during the national anthem, but that nearly 50 years after Ali was banned from boxing for his stance and Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s raised fists caused public ostracization and numerous death threats, we still need to call attention to the same racial inequities. Failure to fix this problem is what’s really un-American here.

Medicaid expansion, Krugman noted, disproportionately benefits nonwhite Americas, and voters in red states — particular the white ones — “don’t like the idea of helping neighbors who don’t look like them.” Instead, they elect politicians who paper over racism with the thin clapboard “fiscal responsibility” and deny access to healthcare to millions in their states.

This debate is not really about pure free speech. No argument ever is. It’s about speech norms and who gets to set them. I think a coherent argument can be made that since colleges are institutions, the institutional authorities rather than the students ought to get to set them. That’s the way institutions work. But it’s a very different argument than free speech, if I may be so unsafe as to say.

This week, in a scathing take-down of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton linked him to white supremacists and white nationalists in the alt-right movement, and laid bare his own history of racial discrimination. Republicans responded with deafening silence. Continue Reading →

White nationalists, once dismissed as fringe, believe that their worldview is gaining popularity and that the old Republican Party is coming to an end. The rise of the alt-right has come to define how many of its adherents see Donald Trump.

Donald Trump Isn’t Really Reaching Out To African Americans

Contrary to recent headlines, Donald Trump isn’t reaching out to African-Americans. He isn’t even talking to us. He’s talking past us, and saying exactly what his alt-right base wants to hear him saying to black folks.

Wingnut Week In Review: Trump Takes “Alt” Out of “Alt-Right”

Donald Trump’s announcement of his new campaign team completes the process of bringing white supremacists and white nationalists from the extreme fringe into the mainstream of American conservatism and the GOP, which began when Donald Trump started his campaign.

Teens in the U.S. who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual are three times more likely to be raped than their heterosexual peers. They are significantly more likely to be the victims of violence, to suffer from depression and to engage in risky behaviors like drug use.

“I also came of age post 9/11 and the Iraq war. I thought maybe I could get sent off to war and die there,” he told Noah. “And then George Zimmerman kills Trayvon Martin and now you have to worry about people who think they’re police officers. So there’s all of these different elements at play contributing to that anxiety that your life is devalued in a way that could end at any moment.”

Nobody is mistreating Mr. Trump. To the contrary, we are listening and shaking in our boots as Mr. Trump’s own words continue to rattle the people, that Mr. Trump in fact has targeted to rattle from the time he took to the political trail. All in love, war, and politics, is fair.

In other words, the Democrats have not abandoned the working class in favor of urban sophisticates. It remains the backbone of their coalition as it’s always been. It’s just that the working class is not as white as it used to be.

Wingnut Week In Review: Trump Shoots Off His Mouth

Is suggesting that second amendment advocates assassinate Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton enough for Republicans to finally renounce their endorsements of Donald Trump? You already know the answer.

The only lucid message Trump’s sending at this point: He’s not a reliable communicator. It doesn’t matter if you have the best words ― as Trump has literally claimed ― or if you’re refreshingly frank and un-PC. If no one understands what the words mean, and you can’t even commit to their meaning, you’ve failed as a leader.

Trump’s Not Fooling LGBT Americans

Donald Trump seriously thinks he can woo LGBT voters with empty rhetoric about “protecting” us from terrorist attacks. But who’s going to protect us from his religious extremist friends, and his party’s anti-LGBT platform?

When Philando Castile was killed on July 6, he was not the only victim of police violence in that car. The trauma that Diamond Reynolds and her young daughter experienced marks them as victims as well.

Mothers of the Movement: Out of Grief, Unity and Hope

The Mothers of the Movement brought the audience at the Democratic National Convention to its feet, and hushed it with the staggering losses that brought them there. It was one of the most powerful moments of the convention. Yet it should never have been necessary.

So, why is Michelle Obama the one person who throws Trump off his game? I’m not sure I can satisfactorily answer that. But what strikes me is that she doesn’t engage on his level. As she said Monday night, her motto is “when they go low, we go high.”

The modern Republican Party is dead and Donald Trump killed it. He did so by extracting its heart, a large group of voters who joined the party because of their views on race but who disagree with the GOP’s economic positions.

Oh, come on. Christian Bale has a point. If Moses were around today — “hearing voices” and acting out — he’d probably be diagnosable as schizophrenic. After all, when people “hear voices” today, they end up as mental health patients, not prophets.